Brit holds the 'key to the Internet' (reboot the web if it Goes down.)

[TrafficProducer]

Brit holds the 'key to the Internet

(Reboot the web if it Goes down.)

from Yahoo News

An entrepreneur from Bath has been selected to safeguard the future of the Internet in the event of a terrorist attack or other catastrophic event.
Paul Kane, chief executive of Internet management company CommunityDNS, is one of seven people who were given a ‘key’ to restart the Web if it is knocked offline.




Mr Kane is the key holder for Western Europe while the other six individuals will share responsibility for the rest of the world.

In the event of a security breach, six of the seven individuals will be required to travel to a secure location in the United States where they can collectively recover the master signing key.

The keyholders would be able to reboot secure systems that underpin some of the Internet to ensure Web users are directed only to genuine websites.

Mr Kane said: “I’m honoured and excited to be recognised for past achievements and current contributions to global Internet security.

“We are very pleased to be part of stimulating innovation in the Bath area and see the University of Bath becoming a global centre of excellence for enabling Internet technologies.”

Mr Kane’s company is made up of a team of specialists that created a security system, known as DNSSEC, that companies can use to make their websites more secure.
Kane has dismissed suggestions that a single key could be created to reboot the entire Web. “Such a key would trigger the Balkanisation of the Internet,” Kane told The Guardian.

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Related Information.

CommunityDNS

DNSSEC, (DNS Security ExtensionSecuring the Domain Name System).

[Katt]

Reboot the web? I thought for a second this must be from the Onion, but it's from Yahoo? I don't get it.

[SemAdvance]

Wow when did they have the ability to determine what is a genuine website???

Why is it that currently we can easily be sent to non-genuine websites???

What will happen after a nuke attack lets say, that will make Internet sites suddenly secure??

Someone stopped exploits worms and trojans from being effective????

<---confused

[carol]

This is making my head spin. If there is such chaos that the entire Internet goes down - contrary to the way it was invented, so that the loss of nodes would not affect the viability of the whole - how will people travel on airlines, etc. in order to get to one place where they can "reboot" it? Or are we discussing what would happen if the Web alone "went down," not affecting the rest of the Internet/other protocols (email etc)? What might cause that? A simultaneous attack on global DNS servers? And there have been 7 people publically identified who will collectively restart "the" web service, with a "master signing key"? This sounds like "April Fools." What am I missing here?

[byronc]

it must be rubbish, why publically announce who they were? hope they are getting danger pay.... if i were a terry, i would be adding this guy to my plan of action

[jxw]

Gee, I wonder where in the United States the master signing key is located.

[C0ldf1re]

Just waiting for kgun to post all about the Viking skeleton-key that will reboot the web quicker and faster...

[wige]

Hm. Sounds like someone was sent to cover a story about the Internet without having a clue what they were talking about. This has absolutely nothing to do with turning the Internet back on. Essentially, this is a cryptographic key that will allow data to be re-secured following a global...

Let me try explaining it a different way...

Soon, a new encryption scheme will be implemented to harden the DNS system, called DNSSEC. This system uses a combination of public and private keys, that are checked against a trusted root server. It is a mechanism very similar to HTTPS. Lets suppose I am a terrorist, and I want to knock out ecommerce. I don't need to take out the entire Internet, I only need to take out four or five buildings, which are the root servers for Thawte, Verisign, and a couple other companies. With their datacenters destroyed, no browser will be able to verify SSL certificates - this will effectively disable all HTTPS transactions - in effect, no transactions would be able to take place, because your browser would refuse to connect to secure servers. In fact, I don't think they would even be able to decrypt them.

Now, with the new DNSSEC system, the same vulnerability will be introduced into the system that converts domain names into IP addresses. Knock out those datacenters, and no browser would be able to resolve addresses, effectively killing the Internet.

This is where these keys come into play. In the event of an attack, any five of the seven keyholders will be able to travel to a predetermined location and generate a new master key, allowing them to create new trusted root servers, restoring the secured DNS network.

[TrafficProducer]

Isn't Seven one of these special numbers? Like a lucky number.

wige< some great info above thanks